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So, let's talk frankly here. Many, though not all, of the people here and in the YC ecosystem etc., work or have had worked or otherwise made their careers (an
by aaroninsf 3y ago
So, let's talk frankly here.
Many, though not all, of the people here and in the YC ecosystem etc., work or have had worked or otherwise made their careers (and fortunes),
helping concerns whose business model is entirely, openly, founded on maximizing user growth and user engagement. So as to sell personal data in one direction and ads in the other.
This has been something like at trillion-dollar endeavor, and a lot of those dollars have gone into the science (formal and "field") of ensuring those two things.
I.e, to MANUFACTURE ADDICTION.
It's not a bug. It's not just a feature. It's THE feature.
What I tell my own kids, who are not allowed on TikTok, or any Meta property, at all, full stop,
is that against the evolved state of these properties, on our twinkly devices, we have no more defense against addiction than we do against the physiologically analogous fat and sugar.
It's not about discipline.
It's not about habit formation.
It's not about best practices in schools.
It's not about "downtime" and tepid screen time controls.
The problem is more fundamental, and much, much, much uglier, and much, much, much intractable, than most discourse about it admits.
The only solution today, literally, is not to play the game.
Footnote: AI is going to make things 1000x worse, which I would not have believed possible a few years ago.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> we have no more defense against addiction than we do against the physiologically analogous fat and sugar I don't understand - we have quite a lot of defense against those things.
- aaroninsf 3y agoAs I think quite the opposite (more—think that it's incontrovertible!) I welcome expansion on what you mean, we may be interpreting "defense" differently for example!
- robertlagrant 3y agoPossibly we're meaning different things! I was meaning we have brains to understand what we should avoid (over)eating and willpower to choose to act on that knowledge.
- aaroninsf 3y agoI would say, yes to understanding... ...no to the willpower part, or choice, though this might quickly become tangled in the semantics of those words. Part of what I believe (and assert) is that understanding, belief, intention—all the self-conscious cognition and knowledge we have around e.g. fat and sugar, has on the whole moderate (or no) influence on our actual behavior, because it is opposed by and undermined by the other part of our brain, the part that evolved in conditions within which sugar and far were extremely scarce. The dilemma the developed world has today is that cheap calories are cheap and we live in a condition of abundance, with bodies (brains) evolved for a condition of scarcity. It's not that any one person might not make a reasoned decision, or successfully inculcate habits that remove them from situations where their own instinctual selves short circuit those decisions... ...it's that on the whole, most people are not very successful at this. Modulo the conditions of upbringing and culture etc... which are relatively modest influences... It's hyperbolic to say we have no defense, I concede... it might be better to say, it takes some happy mixture of conditions including habit-formation and cultural context, to aid the cognitive self in overcoming the animal self. The main point though was, we have recapitulated a comparable dilemma with respect to methodically crafting social media (etc etc) to engage the animal self. For fun and profit. And the hidden and deferred costs of this are legion.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoYup. Every time people talk about maximizing "engagement", they're talking about manufacturing addiction in users. The solution is the destruction of the business models that require addiction. Make technology to block ads or just straight up make them illegal. Make personal information a huge liability.